Welcome to the Clutch Case.
It’s been over 5 months since the last and contains 17 new skins.
For the first time ever they’ve ALL been made by artists who already have skins in
earlier cases.
I would say to click on the weapon you’d like to see, but oh wait, Youtube removed
annotations.
Timestamps are available in the description.
Sorry.
The MP9 Black Sand, by MGBazz and Mals1, was designed to have a ‘somber appearance’
that would fit in with a military-spec level design.
It’s branded with the fictional CHAIN Arsenal logo and is part of a sub-collection called
‘Black Sand’, which are a series of skins designed to blend in with a dusty middle eastern
setting (COUGH Dust) to be used by CT’s in the Black Sand Campaign.
The Galil of the same design has already been accepted and the Famas, MP7 and UMP45 are
also available in this style, but not yet included in part of a case.
Chemical Alia started the Aloha collection back in 2015 and was surprised that nobody
else had done a Hawaiian print pattern at the time.
As she developed her style she dabbled with different finishes and has even redrawn this
design from scratch to give it a more crisp and polished appearance in-game.
The pattern is randomised, so each skin will look unique.
Despite having made skins for the workshop since 2013, it has only been in the past year
that she has had success and has since had 3 skins officially accepted into CS:GO.
This case came as a nice Birthday treat for Hollandje.
It’s the second of this style to be accepted, the first being the deagle from the Spectrum
case last year.
He juggled working on this with his time developing the map, de_studio.
This was the first of the Oxide Blaze design to not have flames on the barrel itself and
he sincerely hopes that you like it.
Raekan the Rock’s P2000 Urban Hazard is the latest of the series to be accepted, going
under the name ‘Crimson Hazard’ on the workshop.
It started life as a P2000 Supercharger and went through several iterations and versions,
before returning to red and making its way into the Urban Hazard collection.
Of the series, the five-seven and MP7 have also been accepted into the game.
And under a different name and colour scheme are the Urban Shock dual Berettas.
All in all, it’s been a very successful skin collection so far.
This intricately detailed revolver is by Teo, who has had repeated success with other 3D-looking
metal designs.
This revolver is part of the ‘Tread’ series because the handle is designed to look like
the sort of rubber you’d get on a tyre, sole of a shoe or…
I don’t know… weapon handle.
Teo takes his metalwork seriously, deciding on the type of metal he’s trying to imitate
and this then determines its properties at different wear levels, which is made possible
with the gunsmith finish.
His goal with these skins is to make something that looks expensive and high-quality, while
not looking too gaudy, that people might want just because it looks nice.
There are several other colour schemes for this available on the workshop which are also
pretty cool.
The PP Bizon Night Riot by M1nd Designs was made to give some love to the less popular
weapons in CS:GO.
He originally gave it the name ‘Uproar’ though Valve at some point changed its name
to ‘Night Riot’.
For the big popular weapons he has another series that you may have heard of, or even
had items from, called the Elite Build.
Of his Uproar series, the UMP45 was in an earlier case and only the MP7 is left to be
included now.
PTP made this five-seven skin soon after the Gunsmith finish was added to the game.
It was one of his first attempts to utilize the alpha exponent to create a metallic flake
paint finish that sparkled in the sun.
It’s part of his popular Hotrod collection, all of which are metallic and airbrushed designs
that are inspired by classic hotrods.
The XM1014 and glock have already been included in previous cases.
The SWAG7 is the first of 2 skins in this case that are made by the Honey Badger.
Now I always love covering his works since each has a story behind it, all beautifully
written up on the workshop page should you want to learn more.
This skin was made as a followup to a sticker of the same style.
He says that the positive reception to his Rekt 9 on the workshop also encouraged him
to pursue this design.
He wanted to keep the colour scheme simple so that it didn’t look too garish, but couldn’t
decide between a silver design that faded with wear or the gold finish that wore to
black and white…
so made both!
He thinks Valve chose the right one and thinks the gold skin’s transition style was put
to better use in his P2000 Imperial Dragon design, which has also made it into the game.
The Lionfish is another skin by PTP, inspired by the patterns found on lionfish, believe
it or not.
He told me that sea creatures have some amazing natural patterns.
After a few quick tests, he realized that not all patterns carried through to a weapon
design that well.
But the lionfish shapes did, while still being recognisable as a lionfish.
He started out with a black and white shape, got that to tile correctly, then added shading
to give the pattern depth.
Finally he layered on some micro detail to mimic artifacts that might come from spray
painting a weapon.
There is now a whole series of skins based on this design on the workshop.
They seem split 50-50 between this design and a darker subtle red.
The pattern is randomised so each design will look unique.
The Wild Six nova shotgun by Dasdas took about 2 weeks to make.
He loves post-apocalypse styles and he had a lot of fun designing this one in particular,
influenced by numerous movies and games from the genre.
There were originally 3 versions of this skin, but eventually he chose the yellow version
with a smiley face on the front of the barrel because he thinks it’s the most fun.
Just like a vehicle from some future wasteland, you’ll find painted teeth, stickers and
numbers plastered all over this design.
This UMP45 Arctic Wolf was made by Blossomalex, who told me that the theme was of a battlescarred
white wolf, inspired by a book called ‘White Fang’, written by Jack London.
It goes from dark grey at the back of the design to almost white at the front, which
is where the fangs would be.
There’s a midnight blue background that features bites and scratches to really give
the appearance of an aggressive battle animal.
Moonrise is another skin by MGBazz and Mals1, inspired by Hotline Miami.
They started off by playing with the shape of the glock, mixed with an anodized airbrushed
finish.
It’s got a couple of cool features.
The texture shifts, but only horizontally, giving each design a unique pixel-art skyline
on the side.
Look closely enough and you’ll notice a faint TV-scan-line appearance.
And there’s a 3.75% chance that you’ll get a rare design with a ‘star’ showing
on the button on the side, as a nice extra little Easter egg.
The USP-S Cortex by Glasgowdied’s account is a hand-drawn creation that originally was
meant to look like brain matter, but he decided it looked more like gum and accepted that
it would be that for the final product!
…though you can still see that it may originally have come from a skeleton’s head!
The design becomes more red and green with wear and tear, though most of the details
remain in-tact including the ‘USP’ written on the suppressor.
The Stymphalian is another epic by the Honey Badger with a story to tell.
He was inspired by the map, Santorini and decided to make some finishes based on Greek
antiquity.
For the AUG he chose birds of prey since they have good eye-sight, which is what a scoped
weapon gives its user.
After many iterations he settled on one of the tasks that Hercules was given, which was
to clear out a swamp of Stymphalian Birds, who were man-eating creatures with beaks of
bronze, had sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims… and poisonous dung.
He studied greek pottery to get the colour scheme and after many versions and iterations
finally got to where it is now.
It was the longest he had ever spent on a single skin and was fed up by the end of it…
but also proud.
Despite all this, he wasn’t even sure that the CS:GO community would like his design.
Fun facts: he uses the greek Alpha and Beta symbols in the design, bit like how there
are A and B bombsites.
He games on lower settings so makes his designs look decent even with low texture quality
so that everybody can enjoy his creations.
And lastly, an early version had an eagle instead, but he felt it was too ‘third reich’.
The AWP Mortis, much like the AK47 Empress, is part of a larger series by Zaphk where
he intends to eventually cover the entire series 1 of the Tarot Collection.
The future plan is to make skins based on all of the 22 major Arcana cards.
People on Reddit pointed out that this looked very much like a dead version of the Dragon
Lore, but it’s actually a dead horse skeleton, based on a particular Tarot card.
The Bloodsport MP7 features a fictional story about how terrorist attacks became so frequent
that industry leaders sponsored the greatest CT’s who had become celebrities in their
own right, this skin being one such design based around racing and extreme sports sponsors.
Slimeface says it was inspired by Wipeout from the PS1 since the MP7 kind of reminded
him of a spaceship.
But his time with the console wasn’t to be- he enjoyed gaming on it until a slug got
into the back of it and blew it up.
And lastly, Donschi’s Neo-Noir M4.
There’s not much information on this design, but the already-accepted USP-S was based on
a black and white illustration which was then given some fancy striking colouring to give
an additional ‘push’.
This one is a new illustration, a girl that uses sword in battle who has a scar from previous
encounters.
All illustrations are done with the specific weapon in mind, so each design from the collection
is unique although retains a similar colour scheme.
But there’s more- it’s also part of a larger collection with different colours.
And that’s it for the Clutch Case.
Thank you to all of the artists who talked with me about them.
Much appreciated!
I hope I’ve pronounced everything correctly ☹